Auction 97 garners record $44.9B in total winning bids
Well it took more than two months and 340 rounds of bidding, but the Federal Communications Commission’s Auction 97 proceedings came to an end this morning. The FCC spectrum auction garnered just under $44.9 billion in total potential winning bids, with three of the 1,614 total licenses up for bid remaining in the hands of the FCC.
Auction 97 far surpassed the amount of money raised and length of bidding of all previous FCC spectrum auctions. Auction 73, which included 700 MHz licenses auctioned off in 2008, lasted 261 rounds and generated $19.6 billion in total bids; while Auction 66, which included AWS-1 (1.7/2.1 GHz) licenses auctioned off in 2006, went 161 rounds and generated $13.9 billion in total bids.
The licenses up for bid were spread across the 1.7/2.1 GHz spectrum bands known as AWS-3. The licenses included three 5×5 megahertz licenses (G-, H- and I-Blocks) and a single 10×10 megahertz license (J-Block). The G-Block licenses are carved into commercial market area-sized licenses, which total 734 licenses covering the country. The remaining blocks are economic area-sized that will total 176 licenses covering the country. The 15 megahertz of unpaired spectrum is split into two licenses, one with 5 megahertz of total spectrum parsed out on an EA basis, and the other with 10 megahertz of spectrum also in an EA configuration.
The auction’s big-ticket items were the J-Block license centered on New York City, with one lucky bidder scoring for $2.7 billion. The J-Block license centered on Los Angeles was No. 2 with a winning bid of nearly $2.1 billion, followed by the I-Block license centered on New York City at $1.3 billion.
The three licenses that failed to get winning bids included the B1 licenses centered on Cincinnati; and G-Block licenses centered on Hodgeman, Kan., and San Miguel, Colo.
Seventy participants were eligible to bid in the auction, including Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile US and Dish Network. The FCC said it would disclose winning bidders “within the next few business days.”
RCR Wireless News recently spoke with Roger Entner, founder and lead analyst at Recon Analytics, about Auction 97, with Entner noting the auction’s record haul shows signs of insecurity on the side of mobile operators that are unsure how current government debate over broadband regulations could impact their operations.
RCR Wireless News also spoke with Bill Ho, founder and lead analyst at 556 Ventures, about how license winners in the FCC’s Auction 97 proceedings could offset some of the high costs associated with those AWS-3 licenses with lower costs tied to current network deployments using spectrum in the AWS-1 band.
Along with proceeds generated from last year’s Auction 96, a portion of auction proceeds will go towards fulling funding the government’s FirstNet initiative. That public safety network is set to receive $7 billion in funding to help building out a nationwide, high-speed wireless broadband network using LTE technology. FirstNet is currently in the process of reaching out to equipment vendors, tower companies and established operators in order to come up with build out plans.
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